Sticks and Stones
by Sleepyreader13
Summary: Because sticks and stones could break his bones, but words would always be the only thing that would really hurt him. Warning on the inside, and rated for a reason.


A/N- This was asked for by a couple of you, so I hope this meets expectations.

WARNING! - Guys, this is angsty. It's graphic, it's nasty, but it's also nothing I haven't already seen on almost a hundred stories out there. If you can't handle extreme angst and/or painful scenes, this isn't for you. Don't say I didn't warn you.

A huge, huge thanks to IceDragon19 who beta'd this. You guys really have her to thank for this being readable and actually posted.

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Because I grabbed the wrong Doc last time, and the one I grabbed wasn't edited. =\ Edited 10-10-12

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If you recognize it, I probably don't own it.

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I'd always been told that words didn't matter. They'd always told me that what others said could only hurt you if you let it, and that words could leave no pain. They'd told me that Dash was wrong; that Kwan was just jealous, but even when I'd smiled and nodded back I hadn't believed them. At that point I had just been telling myself that they didn't understand; they didn't know what it felt like because they weren't in my situation.

If I could have found my voice, I would have laughed at the irony of it all.

No, they were just simply _wrong. _It wasn't that they didn't know; it was that they were just wrong, in every sense of the word. To them, maybe, words held little consequence, but I didn't feel that way.

Coming from a fighter, a person who takes hit upon hit and still comes- _rather, _I think to myself, smiling with no real humor, _went- _back for more, wounds hurt, and they hurt bad. But, words, they hurt worse. They hurt with a growing dread-like feeling that leaves you cold and empty and utterly alone. There is no burn of stretching, no itch of healing as the skin closes, and no tingle as a finger ghosts over the long healed scar. No one else knows because no one _sees. _There is no burn because there is no gash, there is no itch because only time and forgiveness heals word wounds, and there is no tingle because there is, and never will be, a scar.

My lips twitched up, even as the skin on my wrists tug and pull and burn and bleed, because this, these consequences of those words, they will scar. And these scars will last forever. They will last even when my memory of the words is gone.

Irony, as it may, likes to have a good laugh at the unfortunate like me.

I can't find it in me to feel sorry for myself, that will come, and I know it will, later. I can only look on as their words ricochet of the contours of my mind, bouncing back and forth and leaving just a little more pain in their wake.

* * *

_Pain, so much pain, and there was no help, no way of retreat. It was like a blazing knife to the heart._

_Eyes so cold that they made Ghost Ice look like fire, blue eyes so hard as they lock on me as I tremble where I stand, hoping my eyes are deceiving me. Large hands clenching and muscles tensing as he looks at me._

_Scared eyes behind goggles, a breath so loud in the silence, red hair falling in her face as her eyes go straight from fear to hatred. Her small hands are on a gun before I have time to back up._

"_Mom?" I ask because I can't get out anything else._

"_You're no son of mine." Harsh, cold, and so painful I flinch._

"_But, Mom…" I'm cut off by an ecto-blast, forcing me to dodge as a second one rockets straight at my head._

"_Didn't you hear her?" I'd never heard him sound like that; his usually happy voice is cold and sharp. "You're no son of ours."_

_I am almost completely knocked flat by the next blast, this one aimed at my chest, because the itch at the back of my eyes has forced them to mist as I stare at their hateful faces. My chest is aching but I know there is no wound there._

_I can't seem to make sense of it, can't seem to move correctly. I just stare at them, tears slowly trickling down my face, and watch as they seem to move forward in slow motion, those hateful expressions still etched on their faces._

"_But," I start again, unable to get out anything else, "Mom?" I sound like I'm choking._

_At her look, I am._

"_You're a ghost," she spits out, raising up a blaster and aiming it at my chest, "a freak. Not my son."_

"_You quit being my son the day you turned into __**that**__. Maybe the government can give us back our boy once they dispose of you, Phantom." Dad says, pulling something out of his pocket._

_I widen my eyes and stare down the barrel of the blaster trembling in front of me. Dad comes up behind her, pointing a thermos at me. His blue eyes are as cold as ice and I know that I've lost. I can't get my mouth to work, my feet won't move, and I can't fly. My core- my powers- are so out of reach at the moment that even if I could have concentrated enough to use them I wouldn't have been able to._

_I couldn't have done anything to them anyway. Even if they hated me, I loved them too much._

_Dad looks at me; his mouth is twisted in a disgusted sneer, and opens the cap on the thermos._

_I scream until he shuts the cap back onto the device and I'm surrounded in darkness, not knowing if I was yelling because of the promise of the future, or the pain._

* * *

Now I realize I should have been screaming for the future, and the pain that came with it. Those little word wounds they inflicted then? They were nothing, _nothing,_ to what happened in those next few hours. That, in all respects, was worse.

Oh, it was so, so much worse.

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_I've always been afraid of examination tables. Always. Before this mess it was doctor's offices and their so-white-it-burns lights over crinkly-crunchy-stiff paper on a table so uncomfortable it should be illegal to sell them, and then it was Vlad and his tables and harnesses, then Dani was stuck on one and I almost went crazy seeing her tied down like that. Now this; I don't think I'll ever see a table in the same light ever again._

_If I ever got to see another table again._

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And they had always told me to not let words hurt me. Oh, even if their words hadn't affected me, even if they hadn't torn my heart out and stomped on it, the other things would have made up for it, they would have made up for it tenfold.

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_I couldn't see right, there was something black and fuzzy at the edge of my vision and the whole world was spinning. There was something cold beneath me, something hard and unresisting on my wrists and ankles, and I couldn't move._

_Why couldn't I move?_

_I tried again, thrashing and jerking away, trying to curl into myself and failing miserably. My wrists burned, and my vision focuses long enough for me to see the silver material on my uniform darken in a sickly green as I pulled against the metal restraints. I pull harder._

_Why am I restrained?_

_My vision clears completely. I look around, still struggling in a vain attempt to pull free, and suck in a startled gasp at the familiar lab. I ignore the burning, ripping, tearing at my wrists and redouble my attempts. I'm NOT in my parent's lab, I'm not, and I'm definitely not strapped down to their dissection table._

_No. No, no, no, no, no, nonononononononono. This…no…. this can't be happening. They can't… they wouldn't. No…_

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My mind was rebelling then. I almost wish it would now.

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_But, I know they would. Their words today—yesterday? Two hours ago?—told me they would, no doubt. I remember their words, their faces, and my chest aches more than my wrists do. It feels like a hole in my chest, like they've made an incision right to my heart._

_My subconscious whispers, voice already drenched in a panic I was trying to choke down, "__**That might be what happens."**_

_I clench my eyes shut, forcing the rising panic back down and hiding from the too familiar lab. I try to curl into myself, to roll into a ball and protect my too exposed body, but the restraints are pulling –tearing, ripping- my wrists and my fingers are already too warm and slick with the red-green mix for my liking._

_And the strong hand that slaps down on my chest would have stopped me even if the restraints hadn't. A thick black glove covers a hand I know is Dad's, and I almost have to blink as I look up into the too familiar lab and see his day-glow suit. His goggles cover his eyes, but I can still see them, twin pools of ice, glaring with enough heat to melt the arctic. I want to shudder, to curl into myself and get away, far away, but I can't. I can't, and his glaring blue eyes tell me he's not going to let me either._

_I hear Mom now, "Is he ready?"_

_My eyes fly to where her voice is, and I know they're wide and scared and glowing. She has her goggles on too, and, like Dad's, I can see right through them. It's a curious hate, a victorious glee, and her purple-blue eyes shine with something that can only be described as smugness. I shiver against the cold table and try not to look too much at what she has in her hands. A clip board sits in one of her palms, but her other fingers are clenched around a scalpel, shiny and glowing a soft green in the too familiar lab lighting._

_No. No, no, nononono. This can't be happening. It can't be._

_And that little voice is back. "__**But, it is."**_

_I close my eyes as Mom leans over me._

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I smirk, my split lip pulling up- there's red-green blood spilling over my lips, but I don't care- in a painful grimace that makes my mom flinch. I can see it all the way from where they're dragging me away, her face darkening just for a second because she's now seeing her blue-eyed son being dragged away and not the white haired ghost, but I can't find it in myself to care. Her eyes are worried now, concerned.

It's a bit late for that now, Mom. That concern would've been much more helpful two days ago.

Because two days were all it took, and everything had come crashing down around me.

Even if I lived to be one hundred, even if I lived forever- which I doubted at this point-, I would never, _ever _forget.

* * *

_I felt the cold metal touch my skin for a moment, just barely grazing the skin right above my navel, and I bite down on my lips, hoping to at least not make too much noise._

_I don't want to make them mad, not strapped down to a table._

_I shouldn't have even tried. I felt her put pressure on the knife, the cold metal sliding into my body as if it were made of butter, and I whimper. It seems to egg her on, because now she's dragging the knife up my body, every motion felt through my entire body. Every nerve in my body's on fire. There's a scream echoing in the room, but I can't tell whose it is. I can't concentrate, the only feeling in me is the cold-hot feel of the metal slowly, slowly, ripping me open and of the warm blood that's quickly making tracks down my chest and pooling around me on the table._

_She stops for a moment, and I pray to whoever is out there that it's over, but it isn't._

_She twists the knife, dragging it up my chest at an angle, and even through the screaming echoing off the walls and the pain that's making me fight and go limp at the same time, I realize with a shocking clarity what they're doing._

_They're vivisecting me. Awake, and feeling; they're cutting me open._

_There is so much blood running across my skin I have to look like something out of a horror movie, but that doesn't seem to stop her. The knife just keeps going, ripping, and those screams are still echoing through the room._

_My mind is spinning. NOnononononono this can't be happening. The colors of the room are blurring together and all I can feel is the pain of that knife cutting straight into my chest._

_It's only when the knife stops and is extracted from my skin and the screaming still continues that I realize I'm the one screaming._

_And I don't stop screaming as the knife comes down again, slicing me on the other side._

_I hope it's over now, now that they know I can feel, that I have blood, but I know it's not._

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It wasn't even close.

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_I hear the snap of a latex glove and I flinch, every inch of my body rebelling against the movement and the sound. I can feel the blood pooling around me, hear as it _drip-drips _to the floor._

_That's when I can feel fingers probing my skin. Fingers gripping the cut skin and peeling it back. Metal tools are entering the open crater in my chest and making unearthly clicking and crunching sounds against nerves that have been set aflame and know nothing else._

_I last about half an hour. I can just barely make out the words "Bone sample" and "saw" before my mind just completely collapses and I'm lost in a sea of black, cold-hot pain._

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I know my eyes are dull, I know my body's thin, and I know Mom's seeing her son being dragged away, but I don't care.

Looking at the pain in her eyes, I give in to the more sadistic side of myself, and I almost enjoy causing her as much pain as she caused me.

Almost.

I can't do that to someone, even if they did it to me.

I see Mom whisper an "I'm sorry" and I just shake my head and laugh.

She winces as one of the guard's fists connects with my head, and I see stars as they pull me backward still.

It was painful, it caused my head to swim, but it didn't really _hurt._

Sticks and stones my break my bones, but words will always be the only things that will ever truly hurt me.

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What'd you guys think? Horrible? Decent? Wanna tell me?


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